In the very heart of Gabon, Lopé National Park is one of the country's most astonishing and accessible places. Its great rarity is obvious the moment you arrive: instead of the dense rainforest that covers almost all of Gabon, here wide grassy savannahs open up, dotted with small groves — a landscape that feels almost like an East African safari in the middle of the equatorial forest. It's a unique mosaic, the legacy of major climate changes thousands of years ago.
That open landscape makes Lopé the best place in Gabon to see wildlife: huge groups of mandrills — the primates with the most spectacularly coloured faces and rumps on the planet, which gather here in hordes of hundreds and even more than a thousand individuals — forest elephants, buffalo, antelopes, gorillas and chimpanzees. And as if that weren't enough, the region holds a human treasure: thousands of ancient petroglyphs and archaeological sites documenting tens of thousands of years of human presence, which earned it UNESCO World Heritage status.
On top of all that, Lopé is the easiest park to visit in Gabon because you get there by train, on the legendary Transgabonais, which crosses the country from Libreville to Franceville. This guide tells you how to get there, when to go to see the big mandrill groups, how to explore the savannahs by 4x4, where to see the petroglyphs and where to stay. Lopé is the perfect gateway to Gabon's wild nature, no impossible expeditions required.
Lopé is both a natural wonder and one of the great archives of human history in Central Africa. Its mosaic of savannah and forest is a relic of the climate changes of the last ice age, when the forest retreated and advanced, leaving these grasslands in the middle of the equatorial forest. And its thousands of petroglyphs and archaeological sites document tens of thousands of years of human occupation, from the Stone Age to the Bantu migrations and iron metallurgy. Because of this dual value, natural and cultural, UNESCO declared it a World Heritage Site in 2007 as the 'Ecosystem and Relict Cultural Landscape of Lopé-Okanda'. The full story is on our history page.
Read the full history ↓Gabon's forest heart and its two UNESCO World Heritage gems: Lopé, where savannah meets rainforest and ancient petroglyphs survive, and Ivindo, with its great waterfalls and forest clearings.
Read the history of The centre: Lopé and Ivindo →No exact prices: a scale from $ (budget) to $$$$$ (luxury), with 2-3 options per category.
Origins, formation and what the sources say.
The first question anyone arriving in Lopé asks is why, in a country of equatorial rainforest, there are wide grassy savannahs here. The answer lies in the climate of the distant past. During the great glacial and interglacial cycles of the last few hundred thousand years, the climate of Central Africa changed dramatically: in the colder, drier phases the forest shrank and broke up, and grasslands spread; in the warm, wet phases the forest expanded again. Lopé preserves a mosaic of savannah and forest that is, to a large extent, a relic of those swings: its savannahs are remnants of a landscape that was far more widespread in drier times.
This 'relict' character is so distinctive that it is part of the name under which UNESCO recognised the site: 'Ecosystem and Relict Cultural Landscape of Lopé-Okanda'. Today the savannahs survive partly thanks to seasonal fires and to the wildlife, in a delicate balance with the surrounding forest, which tends to take them back. The result is a transition ecosystem with exceptional biodiversity, where forest and savannah species share the same territory.
That natural wealth turned Lopé into a first-rate scientific laboratory. From the 1980s and 1990s, researchers studied forest and savannah ecology here, along with the behaviour of mandrills, gorillas and chimpanzees and the way the landscape changes over time. The Lopé Research Station and the work of international scientists made the park one of the best-studied places in Central Africa. It also became key to understanding how equatorial forests responded to past climate change.
Those open savannahs, set in the middle of impenetrable forest, were a natural corridor for people for millennia. The archaeological sites of Lopé-Okanda record tens of thousands of years of human occupation, going back to the Stone Age. On a continent where rainforest usually destroys such remains, these grasslands and their rocky outcrops have kept an extraordinary record of the human story in Central Africa: stone tools, campsite remains and evidence of successive cultures.
The Lopé landscape witnessed one of the great events of African history: the Bantu expansion. Over the last couple of millennia BCE and the first centuries CE, Bantu-speaking peoples from West Africa moved south and east across the continent, bringing farming and iron-working with them. The Ogooué valley and savannah corridors like Lopé's were routes for these migrations, which reshaped the human map of sub-Saharan Africa.
That long presence left its most spectacular mark on the rock. Around 1,800 petroglyphs are scattered across the park: rock carvings of circles, spirals, geometric patterns and figures, attributed to Iron Age peoples. They are a unique record of the symbols and culture of those who lived in the region, and one of the reasons Lopé is recognised internationally. Walking among these carved stones is a glimpse into the minds of communities that lived here centuries ago.
Formal protection of Lopé began in colonial times. In 1946, the authorities of French Equatorial Africa created the Lopé-Okanda Wildlife Reserve in recognition of the area's exceptional animal life, with its mandrills, elephants, buffalo and primates. It was one of the territory's first protected areas and laid the groundwork for conserving this unique mosaic of savannah and forest, at a time when much of Africa still saw wildlife mainly as game.
After Gabon's independence in 1960, the reserve was kept, and its scientific value grew with the research of the following decades. Studies of mandrills (which in Lopé form the largest known groups of the species), of gorillas and chimpanzees, and of how the landscape changes gave Lopé an international reputation. The area became a symbol of Gabon's natural heritage and a strong argument for taking its protection a step further.
That step came in 2002. In a historic decision announced at the Johannesburg summit, President Omar Bongo created a network of 13 national parks in one go, protecting about 11% of Gabon's territory. Lopé was one of them, turning from a wildlife reserve into Lopé National Park. The decision put Gabon at the forefront of conservation in Africa and laid the foundations of the 'Green Gabon' model the country has promoted ever since.
The crowning recognition came in 2007, when UNESCO added the 'Ecosystem and Relict Cultural Landscape of Lopé-Okanda' to the World Heritage List. It is a rare mixed site, valued for both its nature and its culture, a category very few places in Africa or the world achieve. The committee highlighted two things. One was the relict mosaic of rainforest and savannah, an outstanding example of ecological processes and of how ecosystems responded to past climate change. The other was the set of archaeological sites and petroglyphs that record successive human populations passing through.
UNESCO stressed that Lopé-Okanda illustrates a crucial moment in human history in Africa: the spread of Bantu and other West African peoples along the Ogooué valley, bringing farming and iron, through one of the continent's most important migration corridors. The site combines the long story of how the landscape evolved with the story of human evolution, which is truly unusual.
This double recognition established Lopé as a jewel of world heritage and a symbol of Gabon's commitment to conservation. The park is managed by the Agence Nationale des Parcs Nationaux (ANPN), created in 2007 to run the country's park network. Since then, Lopé has faced the challenge of protecting its nature and heritage while opening up to responsible tourism and scientific research.
Today, Lopé National Park is a wildlife sanctuary, an archaeological site of global importance and the most accessible park in Gabon. Its most practical quirk is that you can get there by train. The Trans-Gabon Railway, opened in stages between 1978 and 1986 to link the coast with the manganese mines in the south-east, stops at Lopé, so you can reach the country's wild heart without relying on difficult dirt roads. This mix of easy access, unique landscape and spectacular wildlife makes Lopé the ideal gateway to Gabon's nature.
The park is also still a leading research centre. Research on mandrills, whose hordes of over a thousand individuals are a phenomenon found nowhere else, continues to add to what we know about these primates. Work on gorillas, chimpanzees, forest elephants and the changing landscape keeps Lopé on the world's scientific map. The ANPN and its partners also work to protect the park from threats such as poaching and the pressure on forest elephants, which have been hit hard by the ivory trade across Central Africa.
At the same time, Lopé is betting on careful ecotourism: 4x4 safaris across the savannahs, primate walks, visits to the petroglyphs and stays in lodges and camps, always with local guides and conservation protocols. For travellers, it is a chance to experience a Gabon that is both wild and within reach. In a single day you can see mandrills crossing the savannah and ancient rock carvings, then watch the sun set over the Ogooué River. Nature and human memory come together in one of Africa's most extraordinary corners.
